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A person's profession has much to do with life expectancy. Clergy, scientists and teachers live longer than the average. Supreme Court Justices often live beyond 80, and their mortality rate has been 29% lower than the national average for men. The reason seems to be that these jobs offer regular hours and a minimum of pressure and tension. By contrast, a study of journalists listed in Who's Who showed that their mortality rate was almost twice as high as the others in that compilation of achievers. Whatever their jobs, people generally stay alive longer if they are allowed to work beyond 60 or 65, instead of being forced into idle retirement. Says Professor Erdman Palmore, an associate at Duke University's center for the study of aging: "If an aging person maintains a worthwhile social role, it keeps him physically and intellectually stimulated. He is motivated to take care of himself." The Soviet Institute of Gerontology states that "man could live longer if he were allowed to work longer." Yet the trend in the U.S. is toward earlier and earlier retirement.
There are all sorts of indications that people live longer when they have a feeling of belonging and being loved as well as a sense of purpose and direction. When the British in World War II united closely to face a common enemy, the death rate from suicide and alcoholism dropped to almost zero. Everywhere in the world today, married people live longer than those who are single, divorced or widowed. For example, the coronary thrombosis death rate in Britain is 40% higher among widowers than among married men of the same age.
Clearly, Americans as a people should strive to live longer. This notion does not contradict the rising cries for population control; even the most zealous advocates of Zero Population Growth would hardly dispute that those already alive should realize the biblical promise of threescore years and ten, or even fourscore. Nor does the idea of adding years to life in the immediate future have much to do with the longer-term efforts of biologists and gerontologists to extend life by vastly altering man's body through the injection of steroids, enzymes or other medical marvels.
It is easy to say that life in the U.S. could be extended if people would only eat, drink and smoke less; work for more years but at a slower pace; find a sense of purpose and direction; and get at least a little love. All of that is desirable —and some of it attainable for many—but to accomplish it for the country as a whole would demand a difficult if not impossible reordering of American society and its priorities, not to mention a considerable shift in the individual American psyche. Certainly the Government should seek to extend longevity by attacking poverty, increasing the quality and availability of medical care, and educating the public about the dangers of overindulgence. At the same time, however, there are other immediate and practical steps that can be taken to increase the life span of many Americans.